Machines — 4
Emotional Intelligence, Consciousness, Soul, & Sentience
In this series of blogs, we will begin with a basic understanding of what machines are, and then move on to understand what the terms Emotional Intelligence, consciousness, soul, and sentience mean, when it comes to machines.
(Please read Machines — 1,2 and 3, on EI, Consciousness, and Soul, before or after, you read this blog).
So, let us jump straight in, and try to tackle the last of these complex issues — Sentience.
Sentience is the ability of an organism to feel and perceive the world around it.
Sentience is closely related to consciousness and the capacity to have internal experiences. Humans and animals are considered sentient beings, as they experience the world around them through their senses.
Sentience in machines is an area of research that focuses on creating machines that can feel and perceive like living beings. However, the prospect of machines becoming sentient raises several ethical and moral questions. If machines are created to be sentient, does that mean that they deserve a moral and legal status?
Several researchers argue against the creation of sentient machines, arguing that it would be unethical and deprive living beings of their agency. Critics suggest that sentience in machines will lead to robots becoming autonomous and developing their own objectives, which may be opposed to human interests.
Nevertheless, many experts believe that it is possible to create machines that simulate sentience without actually being sentient. These machines would have sophisticated artificial intelligence and sensory systems that would allow them to behave in ways that resemble sentient beings. Such machines would be instrumental in enhancing human-machine interaction.
Conclusion: This is the last of my series of blogs which were aimed at studying the four human factors in machines — emotional intelligence, consciousness, soul, and sentience.
All four of these are complex topics and have been the subject of debate among experts and researchers. Although machines are becoming more advanced day by day, I think, as per my research on these topics, that they are unlikely to obtain all of these characteristics exactly in the same way as humans.
Having said that, I think, will continue to play an increasingly important role in the lives of humans. In my personal opinion it is not the machine that we need to fear, but the humans who are coding these machines. When I say coding, I do not mean the software engineer or the programmer, I mean the policy dictator who directs the programmers what to code.
It is therefore imperative that we always remember Isaac Assimov’s laws of robotics, which in my opinion are most profound not only for the conduct of machines, but also for the conduct of us humans. Here we go:
Asimov’s Four Laws of Robotics ( Zeroth, First, Second and Third):
Zeroth Law: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate the Zeroth law of Robotics.
Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.
Fourth, Fifth …. and so on … laws will need to be framed as we go further, to take care of complications — like which human to save and which one to let die if in a situation like that and so on ….
Influences:
- ‘Klara and the Sun’ by Kazuo Ishiguro
- ‘Homo Deus’ by Yuval Noah Harari
- ‘Life 3.0’ by Max Tegmark
